Many great photographers are known by their images, while their names may have no wide recognition. That’s even more the case when you’re talking about photographers who are no longer with us. Take Ed Clark, a mainstay of LIFE magazine from the 1940s through JFK’s presidency.

Now, and running through June 1, the Bruce Museum in Greenwich, Connecticut has a wonderful exhibition titled, Ed Clark: American Photojournalist. The Bruce, as it’s known to locals, is a terrific museum and always is filled with superb art in all media from its permanent collection as well as travelling shows. It also has the great advantage of being a five-minute walk from the Metro-North train station and just off Exit 3 of the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95).

Ed Clark’s best-known image is of Navy Chief Petty Officer Graham Jackson, playing Goin’ Home as FDR’s body is carried by train from Warm Springs, Georgia, after the President’s death in 1945. But Clark’s range of work for Life covered the post-WWII rebuilding of Europe, the Eisenhower and Kennedy presidencies, small-town life throughout The South (Clark was a native Tennessean), and even some of the earliest pictures of Marilyn Monroe. The show at the Bruce Museum has a wide range of work, beautifully displayed.

Although Ed Clark (born in 1911) lived until 2000, he had to stop taking pictures more than 35 years earlier due to failing sight. I never had the privilege of meeting him and telling him that the reason I ultimately became a photographer was largely due to the images and stories he and his colleagues brought to my own small-town doorstep each week when LIFE arrived.

Events across the photography spectrum in the past few weeks are sort of like the connect the dots puzzles I used to figure out in the pre-television era of home entertainment — all of a sudden the answer is revealed, even though the skill level to solve is merely that of an eight-year-old…

And Pentax, in its corporate wisdom, feels that in a world of rapidly declining sales of basic amateur cameras, the best way to counter that trend is to release its three latest models in 120 different colors (good luck there).

And Nikon’s president goes public with sales projections for his company’s products, hoping that revenues for the big toys and optics will counteract the precipitous fall in point-and-shoot models (good luck there).

And urban parents with incredibly cute kids and great photographic skills realize that the diaper bag, toys and stroller simply cannot peacefully co-exist with a bulky camera bag filled with hefty Canon L-series glass. (No matter how badly they want it to seem to their Facebook friends that everywhere Junior went, he projected an aura of luscious, buttery bokeh.)

While I love and appreciate my Nikon D800 for some of the things it can do (many more of its capabilities being lost in the 446-page manual), I carry my Sony RX100 pretty much everywhere. A bunch of very well-written posts recently reveal the latent (or not-so) hostility to DSLRs and the DSLR mindset. There are yearnings for the period when serious photographers, particularly photojournalists, made their reputations with an equipment kit that weighed just a few pounds and filled the wonderful Brady fisherman’s bag (I think the Ariel Trout was the standard), canvas and leather, still made in the U.K., with room left over for film/notebooks/reading material.

One of the best posts of this ilk has come from Chris Cookley, not a full-time pro but nonetheless a serious shooter who has a fine handle on the mess we’re in. Good reading! I’m also finding myself (finally) getting past the “full-frame is best” mentality, in part because of the sheer quality of my RX100 (phenomenal in low-light situations).

To make things much more interesting, here is Fuji coming to the fore with its X100s (and other fine cameras, too). David Hobby’s long appreciation of this fixed-lens camera makes excellent reading for those of us who understand the real need for a digital equivalent of a Leica M-series camera (without paying the idiotic, collectors-only, keep-it-in-the-box-and-watch-it-appreciate price). It doesn’t hurt that Fuji is clearly putting many resources to address the “growing pains” of their X-Series gear via frequent firmware updates and a furious pace of lens development. At any rate, if you haven’t watched Hobby’s video walkthrough and read Zack Arias’ swooning pairof articles on the X100s, please make time to do so. Perhaps your shoulders will thank you.

Finally, back to what the Sun-Times did, and its long-term effects ….. If you need proof of why photojournalists matter so much, look no further than the New York Timesstory on Jeff Bauman, grievously wounded in the Boston Marathon bombing, and his path to recovery. Josh Haner’s photographs, coupled with Tim Rohan’s writing, work together and resulted in a memorable piece of journalism. Real journalism demands real photojournalists; as my first assignment editor at the AP said (in 1968), “We don’t take pictures, we make them.”

Stay in Touch!

We won't flood your inbox, and we won't sell your info to anyone.

Email

Attention: Dealers and Institutions!

We work with film, theater, and photography retailers across the United States and around the world. They include some of the biggest names in the industry… as well as some of the smallest. Over the years we have also consulted with educational, corporate, scientific, and law enforcement groups in order to solve their unique problems. If you're intrigued by our products, please get in touch! We truly believe in the products we sell and distribute, and we look forward to helping you discover how they can serve your needs.